By Mary Schuler DeWitt
Earlier tonight, I had the unfortunate pleasure of watching the The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector (dir. Vikram Jayanti). The film itself seemed flat and uninteresting. If you don't know who Phil Spector it's not that important. He was a record producer back in the 60s and was credited with …

Mary Schuler DeWitt
I decided that my last review as a doctoral candidate would be the film, Buffalo 66 (1998), directed by and starring Vincent Gallo -- a bit of a throwback from the 90s, but a nice break from the mainstream films that are so often reviewed. I had heard a lot about this movie …

God Grew Tired of Us reviewed by Mary Schuler DeWitt
God Grew Tired of Us is a documentary film directed by Christopher Dillon Quinn and Tommy Walker. It tells the story of the "Lost Boys of Sudan". The focus is on the lives of three young men in Africa and the United States: John Bul …

HK Summer Hits, 2012 (Painted Skin 2: The Resurrection and The Four) By Jim Feast
I’ve always been skeptical of the view that at some deep level the mythologies of all cultures are interchangeable. While this belief may be useful for the type of comparisons carried out by writers such as Claude Levy-Strauss and Joseph …

Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011) reviewed by Mary Schuler DeWitt
As a child I was enamored with snow globes, especially around the holidays. I think it was because snow globes hold a tiny world that is man-made and not real. The world of gender created in the movie Hugo has a similar feel to it.
In …

Reviewed by Mary Schuler DeWitt
The Woodmans is an independent film about a family of artists. Beth is an established sculptor, George is a painter and photographer, and their son Charly is an electronic artist. The movie centers around their life as artists and exhibits their artistic works to the audience.
It also focuses on …

Reviewed by Mary Schuler DeWitt“Let’s fly way up to the clouds away from the maddening crowds…Let us leave the confusion and all disillusion behind.” Those are the words to the opening song, Volare, sung by Dean Martin, heard at the beginning of The Rum Diary, directed by Bruce Robinson. If only they were true, …

By Mary Schuler DeWitt
"Errors in Oscar Nominations: Ebert's Suggestions" Sent to us by Mary Schuler DeWitt
John Broughton
Check out this interesting review of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil by TC's Chris Moffett:
Also check out Melissa Cardinale's TC blogpost on books being made into movies:

By Enrico Gnaulati
A series of highly unusual, but parallel events occurred this week in my therapy office. Upon discovering I had procured a new iPhone 4s, three different children in separate sessions picked it up, fiddled with the screen, activated the Siri function, and mischievously asked its phantom voice a version of the same …

Here is a recent review by Roger Ebert, which I have had the hubris to comment upon in the text, suggesting for potential FERA blog reviewers some features that one can see in a good film review written by one of our great living film educators. …

By Margaret L. BatesSchool of Media Studies, The New School for Public Engagement
Melancholia, seemingly about a troubled bride who screws up the wedding by screwing some guy other than the groom, is a gorgeous film that makes you melancholic.
It’s really an apocalyptic movie about something the Occupy Wall Streeters have noted: there’s …